O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Hendrix, Doors Distorted in an Ugly Flashback : ‘Tribute’ by Wild Child and Randy Hansen missed what the ‘60s legends were all about.

Who says the ‘90s aren’t just the ‘60s turned upside down--and shaken, perhaps, until the lint and leftovers tumble out of their pockets? Why, just amble on down to the good old Golden Bear and see the Doors and Jimi Hendrix if you have any doubts.

The place was packed Sunday night, with folks pressed up close to the stage, soaking up the lysergic strains of “Purple Haze” and, later, the hoarse poetry of Jim Morrison.

Oh wow, hey, this sure woulda been groovy, except that Jimi looked more like Don Knotts in a fright wig. And though he was lurching around, making agonized faces like he was hanging off a fishhook, he sure wasn’t playing very well. And while the Lizard King’s band sounded all right, he seemed like he maybe stopped off at the taxidermist on the way to the gig. And the funky old Golden Bear, for that matter, looks awfully like a glitzy corporate disco.

“Aw, there ain’t no life nowhere,” the real Jimi Hendrix complained amid a feedback storm during his 1967 “I Don’t Live Today,” a song decrying the nationwide plastic Burger King play land we’ve erected over the graves of the viable, real-life culture of the American Indians.

One can only wonder what he and Morrison would think if they were to have seen themselves similarly mummified in plastic in Randy Hansen’s Hendrix tribute and Wild Child’s Doors act. Though the latter outfit did a highly credible job at the new, Peppers Golden Bear on Sunday of resurrecting the look and sound of its mentors, both Wild Child and Hansen seemed almost totally at odds with the spirit of the music they were assaying.

With widely differing approaches and degrees of success, Hendrix and the Doors pushed the boundaries of music. The Doors took a drama student’s fresh enthusiasm for Brecht and Artoud and formed it into “rock theater,” which had some genuinely wild moments amid its excesses. Hendrix, meanwhile, was the Charlie Parker of rock, pouring his soul into a whole new vocabulary of musical expression. Their performances could be pure adventure, plunging into the unknown without a map.

But the Thomas Brothers might as well have been doing the driving for Hansen and Wild Child. There weren’t the risks of seeing the original performers--Hendrix, forcing guitars far beyond their intended uses, could be wildly out of tune; there was always the danger that Morrison might puke on you at a Doors show--but there also weren’t any chances taken. As on-the-edge adventures go, the clone acts’ musical excursions ranked about equal to seeing Skipper Alan Hale at a boat show.

Between Wild Child and Hansen, the Doors clones were the far better replication, both for the quality of their performance and its occasional hints of life, and because they aimed for an easier target.

More than anyone else in rock, the Doors have benefited from revisionist history. Though they’re now placed alongside the Beatles and the Stones in the accepted ‘60s triptych, back when the ‘60s were actually going on they weren’t that big a deal, fitting in more somewhere between Steppenwolf and the Kinks. Beyond the Doors’ first two albums, few people took them all that seriously, with Morrison’s leather pants and poetry viewed as embarrassing excess. When he exposed himself at a Florida concert, the action--though regarded as some great revolutionary act now--was then seen more as pathetic, indicative of the band’s decline.

The recharged “L.A. Woman” album and Morrison’s death--which is never a bad career move in rock--elevated the group somewhat. But it wasn’t until 1979 (with their music in “Apocalypse Now,” a well-timed record label push and a juicy biography) that, bang-o, the Doors became gods of the emerging “classic rock” radio format. Oliver Stone’s film about the band, due next month, doubtless will only add to the luster.

The film’s Val Kilmer will be hard-pressed to top Wild Child’s lead singer David Brock in evoking the late Mr. Morrison’s looks, voice and moves. Brock has them down, almost eerily. He yelps; he jumps, he topples; he curses; he boozily recites; he sings and shouts with that familiar whiskey-hoarse voice.

Drummer Dave Madden similarly has a firm grip on John Densmore’s jazz chops and sense of percussive drama. Keyboardist Joel Plimmer had a solid command of Ray Manzarek’s double-duty bass-keyboard and organ technique, though his synthesizer never captured the tones of Manzarek’s doubtlessly less reliable Vox organ and Fender piano bass. He and guitarist Forrest Penner at least attempted at times to throw some original improvisation into their solos, though intentions were rarely matched by results.

The band had clearly done its homework, with much of the set’s structure going along the lines of the Doors’ actual performances (captured on either legit or bootleg recordings): “The Celebration of the Lizard” poem led right into “Light My Fire,” while the Weill/Brecht “Alabama Song” segued into “Back Door Man” with--just like the Doors--a verse of “Mack the Knife” thrown in for good measure.

Along with the obvious hits, the group also tackled such lesser known tunes as “Been Down So Long” and “Not to Touch the Earth.” Hansen’s act, conversely, was as obvious and crass as ever. This writer first saw Hansen nearly a decade ago at the old Bear, and only rarely since have I been so offended by a performance. It essentially was a minstrel show, not so much for the blackface makeup and Afro wig he sported as for the way he portrayed one of the great musical talents of this century as a capering, less-than-human caricature.

Hendrix indeed was an outrageous showman. At the urging of his managers, he did do somersaults, did exploit the phallic proportions of his guitar, and did play up a wild-man image. And he did it better than practically anyone else in rock. But he didn’t do it all the time , was struggling near the end of his life to escape that image, and even while he was about it he also troubled to play some incredible, reality-shaking music.

Hansen’s frizzed hair seems to be his own now, and it’s hard to tell if he’s wearing makeup or instead sending his head to a tanning salon, but otherwise it’s the same awful act. His tongue was continually flicking or lolling about Sunday, as if he were practicing to mimic Kiss’ Gene Simmons if the Hendrix act stops selling. He leaped into the audience, postured and grimaced, all while playing sloppy versions of “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze” and other hits Hendrix was sick of playing 22 years ago.

Hendrix’s “Message of Love” was one of the most insightful songs of the ‘60s: Instead of promoting the standard hippie-versus-Establishment schism, its lyrics offered a challenging game plan for enlightened minds, to find and perfect their talents to reach out to their fellow man. That point seemed somehow lost in the song Sunday as Hansen used it as an occasion to chug-a-lug a long-neck Bud, balanced in his mouth with his head thrown back, while flashing a peace sign with one hand and trilling loud nothings with his fretting hand.

The frightening thing about Hansen is there’s a generation of young fans who, in seeing him, might think his clown act, sloppy playing (jeez, talk about over-bent notes) and utter lack of spirit are what a Hendrix concert was like, which having experienced the real thing when I was 13, I can attest it most certainly is not.

When most British guitar heroes were shut up in their flats worshiping the record grooves of their mysterious blues idols, Hendrix was struggling in the chitlin circuit alongside those blues-men, or jumping out of airplanes at a great height. It’s hard to picture Hendrix as an Army paratrooper, but he was, and the experience of hurtling out of a noisy C-130 into howling space well may have influenced the sounds he later drew out of a Stratocaster and certainly influenced his courage to attempt them.

Since Hendrix’s demise in 1970, the only player who sometimes could convince listeners that, if they closed their eyes, they actually were hearing Jimi was the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, who also had the vision to know that the music needs emotional commitment and growth to really live.

Rather than convincing us that Hendrix and the Doors’ music is alive, Wild Child (however expert it may have been) and Hansen forced the question of just how dead our culture is now. Ex-Door Manzarek has commented recently how fortunate the Doors were to come along when they did, since it is nearly impossible now to get anything radically new into the market.

The ‘60s were fine. But it is the ‘90s, and if we are to make much of the next century, the present might be better spent looking for signs of life rather than reveling in the spoor of deceased eras. The past is there to grow from, not to sink into.

If not, what kind of retro-shows will future generations be saddled with: Imitation Vanilla Ice? Ersatz Ozzys chewing rubber bats? Some band pretending to be Cinderella pretending to be Aerosmith pretending to be the Stones pretending to be Chuck Berry? Milli Vanilli look-alikes lip-syncing to tapes of two other fakes?